Claudio Arrau’s playing in his later years had a rather fixed set of emotional characteristics—serious, pensive, searching, dramatic—and when the music that he played was in sync with those qualities, he was one of the greatest pianists. Like the EMI recordings of his contemporary Otto Klemperer, Arrau’s Philips recordings endure as an important legacy and reference, indispensable for their strength and structural insight, their careful, imaginative voicing and the judicious weighing of every texture. These newly issued live performances afford the chance to compare Arrau’s playing in concert to the studio. As one would expect, his carefully planned interpretations are maintained in live performance, but there’s the added advantage of hearing him play with greater abandon in the most exciting concert performances: the Beethoven “Appassionata” and Brahms’s Third Sonata.

The Brahms and Schumann sonatas were Arrau specialties and in both he invests the manic energy of their faster movements with control that elucidates their construction. His pacing of the sprawling Schumann Sonata is masterful and his playing is truly soulful in its brief “Aria” slow movement. Unfortunately, the mono recording of the Schumann has the constricted, airless sound and quick decay that come from relying on one microphone placed inside the piano or in the very front of the hall. For that reason, his studio version of the sonata—the most convincing performance of the work that I know—is preferable. (The Beethoven performances here, also in mono, are better recorded.)

The Brahms, from a recital in Finland, was recorded in stereo sound that captures Arrau’s distinctively powerful but never forced sonority. It’s an inspired performance, explosive in the huge opening movement, and entirely convincing in the formally problematic finale. His patient, inward playing of the second movement communicates the ideas that he expressed about it in Joseph Horowitz’s invaluable Conversations with Arrau. “For me, it is the most beautiful love music after Tristan, and the most erotic, if you really let go, without any embarrassment. And if you play it slowly enough.” He does.

Among the Beethoven performances, his “Appassionata” is notable for its very expansive pacing that allows the maximum buildup of the work’s drama. As in the Brahms, he “lets go” to fine effect in Sonata No. 23’s first and third movements’ outbursts and climaxes and, unlike many pianists in this sonata, he is extremely faithful to Beethoven’s dynamics, many of which are quiet. (By comparison, a new steely-sounding performance of it by Valentina Lisitsa on Naxos has a dynamic range that ranges from around mezzo-forte to fortississimo.)

Preceding Sonata No. 23 in his 1973 Brescia program, Arrau gave a lively, carefully articulated performance of the early Sonata No. 7 that features playing of maximum intensity in Beethoven’s groundbreaking Largo e mesto slow movement. When it comes to music of such powerful expression, Arrau doesn’t differentiate much between early and late Beethoven, or Beethoven and Liszt, for that matter. His performance of the elusive Sonata No. 13 gives the work a more assertive, even heroic cast than usual. Sonata No. 32 receives a sober, solid performance that seems just a bit prosaic compared to more incisive, inspiring versions by Gulda, Richter, Michelangeli, and Schnabel. In Sonata No. 30 Arrau’s engagement with the lyricism and tenderness that pervade the first and final movements and his intelligently planned, flexible rubato that enhances the music’s rhetoric, make this a very special performance.

It’s in reference to Sonata No. 7 that Arrau, in Conversations with Arrau, expresses his amazement that Edwin Fischer called the work’s finale “humorous”—which, I strongly believe, it is—declaring that “humor has nothing to do with music, humor has to do with thoughts and words. Only in artificial sense can one say that music is humorous”. He goes on to say that he never finds music funny.

The limitations of this outlook take their toll, I think, on most of his performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Variations, which is, in large part, a comic work. (So, come to think of it, is the mock-heroic “Eroica” from Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes.) Arrau’s performance, with the predictable exception of the dignified, slow 15th variation, sounds just a little gruff or stodgy where the work’s humor could be better communicated by means of a lighter touch, sharper articulation, and comic timing in general. But these are minor reservations in relation to the strengths of the best performances in this collection.

Customer Reviews

Sign up now for two weeks of free access to the world's best classical music collection. Keep listening for only $19.95/month - thousands of classical albums for the price of one! Learn more about ArkivMusic Streaming